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Tim Hortons Illegally Tracked You For A Year
By GABRIEL MOSS
Tim Hortons is to Canada what Dunkin’ Donuts is to the U.S., and like many similar vendors, the coffee-and-donuts chain offers its own rewards program via a mobile app. On June 1, 2022, several Canadian agencies jointly released a document detailing their findings after a formal investigation of the app, which revealed the app was doing more than just offering deals for food.
Canada's government, in accordance with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), discovered that the Tim Hortons app had been using the geofencing service Radar to illegally track user data — namely location data — across apps, even when the Tim Hortons app was closed. This had evidently been going on as far back as 2019.
The company agreed to delete all tracked user data that had been obtained illegally through its app, but critics were shocked that Tim Hortons essentially got off with a slap on the wrist and a warning. The coffee chain may have to pay nothing at all in terms of damages — if it manages to stay in alignment with PIPEDA over the course of a year.